Quotable 22

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.
– Orson Scott Card

4 comments on “Quotable 22”

I think there’s room for more than one theory of short story writing. I have in mind a story by David Updike called “Summer,” which stretched out comfortably in a longer space than was absolutely “essential”… yet every element and part of the story contributed to the same effect, so everything was “essential” in that it participated in the same “essence.”

Flash fiction is truly pared-down and gets a lot of its power from its distilled quality, but a longer story, if its elements are as carefully selected and arranged as in flash fiction, can be as powerful, and for some themes more powerful. “Summer” portrays a subtle and poignant state of mind at the end of summer, and the end of childhood, at the end of illusion.

And speaking of illusion, another long story that revels in the accumulation of a single mood very effectively is Joseph Conrad’s “Youth,” which could never have that kind of power if it were much shorter, in my opinion. Again, the word “essential” splits along a semantic fault line: Conrad didn’t “include only the most essential information,” but everything he included was of the same essence — and now that I think of it, “most essential” is starting to sound like “seriously killed” or “mostly pregnant.” If something is of the essence, isn’t it as essential as anything else?

Greg, I suspect there are many theories of story writing. I was reading tonight about a writer who develops her novels by typing a first sentence and seeing what follows that one, with no plot or plan in mind. Talk about driving by your headlights.

I agree completely that “essential” is more than economy with words. In pure (whatever that means) flash fiction, that economy is crucial. In other short stories, I define essential as whatever the author needs to properly convey the story to the reader. Does the writer, in fact, need 150 words to describe a summer afternoon? Fine, then he should use them. If those words help to make the story a better experience, then every word counts.

Brevity is only one touchstone; there are others (tone, characterization, theme, etc.) and each takes precedence given on the desires of the writer and the needs of the story. I abhor wordiness that has no purpose. Wordiness that does something for me as a reader is not a waste.

Also, I hesitated over using “most essential” for the very reason you note. I’m beginning to regret having gone ahead with it. Essential cuts to the core and requires no intensifier. Something for me to be more careful with in the future.